Listen to Steve Knopper, a journalist who writes about the music industry for Rolling Stone, talk with Marty Moss-Coane, the host of Radio Times on WHYY.

Unfortunately, you need Real Player to listen to it. http://www.whyy.org/rameta/RT/2008/RT20080117_20_2.ram

VLC media player works fine for me, playing this stream.

Real Audio is just a format. I'm on Linux and I can play Real Audio and WMV, I can load microsoft office documents and adobe pdf files ... and I don't need anything from Real Networks, Microsoft or Adobe to do any of that.

-Dave

VLC is GREAT and FREE....
2 words that used to describe the US more than now.

I tried VLC before I posted this and it opened a different show from Radio Times. I take back what I said, tho

I also prefer vlc. It always seems like i have real audio issues... aside from the fact that they gave this college station i used to work at a good chunk of $ once.

VLC is a little buggy, but I agree with everyone above that it is better to use VLC than RealPlayer when opening .ram or .ra files. VLC doesn't spy on you and isn't bloated.

BoingBoing reports:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/22/lethem-dj-spooky-and.html

A recent episode of Public Radio International's To the Best of Our Knowledge dealt with remix, reuse, and plagiarism, talking to some of my favorite people on the subject:
Author Jonathan Lethem talks to Jim Fleming about his "Harper's" Magazine essay, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism." As the subtitle indicates, Jonathan Lethem appropriated the words of many authors to cover the subject of plagiarism, although he provides full attribution of his sources at the end of the essay. Also, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid) talks to Anne Strainchamps about his book, "Rhythm Science," and how the art of music sampling relates to plagiarism. We also hear a DJ Spooky/TTBOOK interview mashup.

Mp3 link of the interview.

I agree, VLC is a little buggy. On the other hand, now I have a way to play those m4a files and Apple lossless.

Maybe someday they'll work out the bugs. I was most disappointed that it won't play DVDs without little glitches now and then. Apart from that, it's not too bad.

From the comments so far, I think it's safe to say that the future of music does not involve RealPlayer.

I'm waiting for the RIAA to release their proprietary media player...
It'll track what you play, and has a virus attached that will reside on your hard drive, occasionally reporting what you download back to the RIAA and MPAA....

Oh yeah, THAT'S the one I WANT!